


courage mounteth with occasion

by thereinafter (isyche)



Series: expeditions much unlooked for [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dreamsharing, F/F, Magical Accidents, Missions, Pre-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Psychic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 15:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10338418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isyche/pseuds/thereinafter
Summary: “I just spoke to Most Holy, and she has a new task for me.” She pauses. “Or for us. I thought that … you might be interested. If you are not too busy here.”Leliana laughs, mostly at her own reaction, and buries her face in the pile of papers, then chokes on dust.“But maybe you are.” She unfolds her arms.Leliana interrupts, coughing. “No, no, I think it is very much in the interest of the Left Hand to get out of this room and go where Her Holiness sent you.”





	

 Cassandra Pentaghast is rather difficult to catch a second time, unawares or not.

Since they returned from Vyrantium, Leliana has tried, in moments between the thousand tasks that are piling up (the few extant stories of Left Hands of the Divine fail to mention long hours at a desk). She’s seen her in the practice yard from a distance, walked by her door a few times, but since Mother Dorothea— _Justinia_ , she reminds herself—has dropped her back into the Game at the deep end, Leliana is hardly ever alone either.

Today is an exception. In this windowless closet in the warren of rookeries, part of her inheritance from the former Left Hand, her only companions are dust, bugs both dead and alive, and rolls and stacks of paper that seem to multiply when she isn’t looking.

Leliana covers her nose and mouth with her sleeve and pulls a cobwebbed scroll out of a pigeonhole. An account from an agent in Ferelden, dated before the Blight, concerned about Teyrn Loghain’s growing influence. Well, they are not wrong.

She makes a note, adds it to the pile for archiving, pulls out another. As she sorts, her mind wanders.

On that evening on the edge of Tevinter, she brought up Val Royeaux hallways to make Cassandra laugh, but she also meant it. Maker knows she wouldn’t mind trying that again. And she enjoyed the rest of it, too. Justinia agreed with her report on their collaboration. They did well.

But maybe the Right Hand has changed her mind about all of it, which would be just Leliana’s luck. Cathedral gossip does say she’s had no time or eyes for anyone in years, not even friends.

Leliana sighs and goes back to reading and sorting.

Then, while she is in the middle of a wordy and convoluted year-old report from a Kirkwall merchant, there are steps outside in the hall. They get louder, approaching the door. So, not one of her new agents, who all seem to walk on eggshells or appear like unnerving cats out of shadows.

A pause and then a decisive knock that seems distinct.

“Yes?” she says, glad to put down the report no matter who it is.

The door scrapes open across the threadbare rugs, and when Cassandra puts her head in and confirms her guess, Leliana sits up and thanks Andraste.

Cassandra frowns and wrinkles her nose. “I have never seen inside this room.” She steps in. “You are not so easy to find.”

“That is the idea, is it not?” Leliana gestures. “I think I saw a chair in one of these piles.”

“I can stand.” She leans on the bookshelf next to the desk, under one of the dark corners, and crosses her arms.

“You do not want to know how many spiders I have disturbed today. Metaphorically appropriate, perhaps, but … ugh.”

Cassandra looks up and frowns again, brushes a hand over her hair, then shakes her head and returns her gaze to Leliana. “I just spoke to Most Holy, and she has a new task for me.” She pauses. “Or for us. I thought that … you might be interested. If you are not too busy here.”

Leliana laughs, mostly at her own reaction, and buries her face in the pile of papers, then chokes on dust.

“But maybe you are.” She unfolds her arms.

Leliana interrupts, coughing. “No, no, I think it is very much in the interest of the Left Hand to get out of this room and go where Her Holiness sent you.”

Cassandra smiles like she can’t help it, the way she always seems to. “Well, then. Pack lightly, and you can find me at the stables in the morning.” She sounds pleased under the shortness.

Leliana probably shouldn’t be as delighted by this as she is.

 

* * *

 

The next day, bright and early after sunrise prayer, as they are leading out three horses, Cassandra looks her over, pausing at her bow and quiver and belt knives. “Good. I forgot to say arm yourself.”

“Oh, I assumed that.” Leliana turns away, finishes checking the tack on the horse—a sturdy white beast the grooms call Snowdrop—then mounts, not thinking about split-second choices to take cover or unexpectedly effective stage kisses.

Marjolaine used to tease her for falling prey to distraction. It is better to keep one’s head, yes, and she can, ordinarily, and this time she will remember that. If there is occasion to.

”It should be only two days’ ride out and then back,” Cassandra is saying, “but I have supplies for twice that.” She gestures to the packhorse, already laden with bundles.

They leave the stableyard at a walk and head west through the streets of Val Royeaux.

“So, where exactly are you taking me?” Leliana asks after a while, bringing her horse up to ride abreast and grinning.

“Most Holy did not already tell you?” Cassandra sounds surprised.

Leliana shakes her head.

“Oh. Well. We are looking for a mage, a Grey Warden.”

“A Warden?” She’d assumed misbehaving templars, or demons and abominations. Leliana realizes she doesn’t know much about what Cassandra does, apart from protecting the Divine and intimidating those who need it.

“Marcelle Giroux of the northern Orlesian Wardens. Her last reported location was an outpost on the edge of the Nahashin Marshes. Most Holy says she was an expert on the mind and the Fade in the Circle before she chose the Joining. We are to convince this Marcelle to come back and advise her.”

“Interesting.” Leliana files this away, considers. “I have no eyes in that area that I know of yet, but I do know a few Wardens.”

“So I have heard.” Cassandra adjusts her reins. “Not that I usually listen to that sort of thing. But you never mentioned traveling with the Hero of Ferelden.” This last comes out with an almost bashful curiosity.

And so, though she didn’t plan to bring it up, Leliana ends up telling her first the short version and then, after she asks, a series of her better Blight stories as they ride, northwest out of the city, turning off the Imperial Highway, following a smaller weedy trail along a river.

It feels like being back there, in fact. Refreshing, just traveling without subterfuge or ceremony. She can almost imagine Morrigan lurking behind them disapprovingly and Alistair about to make a joke.

They stop to eat and rest the horses at the top of a hill where the bank rises high above the water. Cassandra takes out a map that’s annotated in an unfamiliar code. “There is a Seeker safehouse that I think we can reach tonight,” she says, pointing to a symbol between their position and the marshes. Leliana files that away, too.

On the other side, the river splits into smaller streams and pools and spreads out into the valley, according to the map, although dense trees hide it from view.

When they descend into the forest, the atmosphere becomes more oppressive. Val Royeaux is tolerable in summer, but away from the sea, northern Orlais is hot and humid.

The branches tangle overhead, dip to the ground, and brush the water in places, blocking out the sun, but not the heat. Leliana fans herself and feels sweat roll down her back under the two layers of shirt and boiled leather she rather regrets. Of course, Cassandra is wearing a good deal more and neither complaining nor fainting, which must be another ineffable gift of the Maker.

As the horses are picking their way through a rocky patch between two massive trunks, their shoes sound loud on the stones. Leliana realizes she has heard no bird calls for some time.

There is another noise in the distance, a heavy splashing.

Leliana pauses. ”Did you hear that?”

Then a raw-sounding bubbling roar comes from the same direction, and the horses roll their eyes and dance in fear.

The creature, or a second one, roars again. Cassandra reins in and peers into the trees. “I think this is not the path we want. Let’s back up. Quietly.”

“What is it?” Leliana mouths as she unstraps her bow from the saddle.

“A wyvern, I think.” Cassandra nods toward a stump with deep scratches in the bark. “If we can get back before it has our scent ...”

She is turning the packhorse in the tight space and Leliana is urging her mount back over the rocks, patting his neck and making soft sounds she hopes are equinely reassuring while trying to look behind her at the same time, when the roar comes again, much closer.

And then she sees them, more than one, in the spaces between branches, blue and green heads, water splashing, weeds ripping. Snowdrop rears, despite his training, and she scrambles to hold on. Behind, the packhorse bolts past, trailing reins torn out of Cassandra’s hold, slipping and sliding on the rocks out of sight through the swamp.

The wyverns whip their heads and charge, pounding through the water toward the path. Two of them, one slower than the other, but both converging.

Leliana grabs for an arrow, pulls the reins to wheel around, sees Cassandra out of her saddle drawing her sword as her panicked horse plunges away after its companion. The wyvern behind roars, as if offended, but the first one doesn’t stop.

She has a clear shot. She holds tight with her legs, pulls the string back, lets fly, and is already reaching for another as she watches it strike. A solid hit; the creature jerks, loses stride, and gives Cassandra the advantage.

Which she takes, and quickly Leliana realizes she hasn’t seen her really fight before, either. And since she has to look to keep shooting, there’s no point in not appreciating it.

Calculation and interest replace worry as she picks targets to give Cassandra new openings and watches her go after them with a fast elegant brutality, cut and thrust and block and hit. Snowdrop is shivering, maybe frozen in fear, but as long as he stays still, she can keep this up, and it seems they won’t need long.

Cassandra is off the path, waist deep in muddy water, finishing the first wyvern in a rain of blows, when the second rallies behind her. Leliana calls out a warning as she sights and looses, but the shot is beautifully lucky and there’s no need; the beast flails and falls.

She persuades the horse forward then, up to the edge of the path.

Cassandra pulls her sword from the first wyvern’s neck and wipes it. She bends down to examine the other, and then splashes back toward her. “Good shot.”

All Leliana can come up with is “Are you all right?”

She shrugs. “I thought I’d be asking you that. But you seem full of surprises.” She sheaths the blade and looks impressed, and the warmth of the day hits Leliana again, suddenly.

She rushes on. “The other horses bolted, poor things. We must find them before—”

“More will come, you’re right.”

“Then we should hurry. Get up behind me?” Before overthinking, she extends her hand and kicks her right stirrup forward.

Cassandra glances down at the blood, mud, and swamp detritus clinging to her armor, looks back at Leliana, then takes her hand and heaves herself up and her leg over behind the saddle. After a pause, she puts an arm around Leliana’s waist to hold on.

It’s less stiff than her faked embraces in Tevinter. Leliana wonders if she’s thinking of them too, and considers joking that she’s improved.

Instead she slips her foot back in and leans forward, Snowdrop takes her lead—he is well trained, really—and they’re off back down the path at a faster clip, following the trail of the spooked horses, a little breeze cooling her face.

Once they are out of the denser trees, Cassandra’s arm tightens and she points with her shield arm. “Look. There.”

Her mount is standing in a lily-covered pool beside the path, tossing his head, mired up to the white spot on his chest. The packhorse is on a hillock across a deeper stretch of water that it must have swum, calmly stretching its neck up to eat moss, all its bundles soaked.

“Maker’s breath,” Leliana says, reining in and sitting back against her.

It ends up taking a great effort of strength and coercion from both of them to extract the hapless Parsifal, as he is called—”After a knight-commander-chevalier from the Blessed Age,” Cassandra explains, mildly disgusted—from the clutches of the swamp, and tempt the packhorse to return. By the time they do, Leliana has fallen in a few times herself.

At least a hot afternoon is better for a swim than a cold one, and her clothes dry somewhat on her back while they’re finding a new route that circles wide around the wyvern territory. Making fools of themselves floundering after the animals has defused any possible tension, and Snowdrop is likely the most pleasant-smelling of them all now.

Eventually, a few miles down a new trail in a less marshy area, Cassandra says, "There! I was beginning to fear we'd missed it." She dismounts and slaps her hand on a low stone marker carved with the Seeker eye. "This is where we leave the path for the night."

Leliana follows her through the trees until they open up to reveal an expanse of sky over a fast-moving bend in the river, with a tidy small cabin concealed at the edge of the forest overlooking it.

"Here we are. I'm glad this one seems intact."

"Are they not always?"

"You can imagine what might happen out here between travelers. I once found one that had collapsed in the outline of a giant’s footprint."

The door has no lock and the cabin is empty, simply a plank floor on pilings with four walls and a roof, but it will be better than the ground.

They unload the horses and spend the rest of the waning daylight taking turns scrubbing mud out of everything. It is tedious and exhausting, and this is the part of rural adventuring she does not miss.

When it’s her turn, Cassandra goes down to the water with her ruined saddlebags, grumbling, and comes back as the sun is setting, in Leliana’s second dry set of clothes, carrying a pile of disassembled armor.

Leliana munches on her share of damp biscuit and notices that her things fit better than she expected. They are, mainly, of a size. The lace collar doesn’t quite go, but it’s charming.

“You should let me dress you up more often,” she says. “Perhaps I’ll take you shopping in Val Royeaux.”

Cassandra sets the armor down on the ground, a sigh of scraping metal, and drops herself next to it. She chuckles. “I am just glad one horse had the sense not to get wet. Buy something nice for him.”

“I did give him the last apple, as a matter of fact.” She yawns.

“I still have to dry all of this before it rusts,” Cassandra says then. “Sleep first, if you are tired.”

Insects are humming in the undergrowth around the Seeker cabin, and it will soon be too dark to read. Leliana agrees to the second watch and takes herself inside to spread her blankets. It’s also too warm for a cover, so she curls on her side on top of them, says a prayer under her breath, and falls asleep as fast as one can in such circumstances.

When she’s shaken awake, the moons are shining bright into the clearing. She lets Cassandra take the blankets, as hers are still drying, and spends her watch sitting outside against the wall, fanning away bugs, and considering things she might say and do the next day.

After the sky begins to turn a lacy pink at the horizon, she goes in and puts a hand on Cassandra's back, half expecting to end up in an armlock for startling her. Instead, she gets a stretch and a sleepy unguarded smile.

“It’s morning,” Leliana says, “and those are still mine. Er, the blankets.” Not something she practiced.

“I will fold them.” Cassandra opens her eyes.

“Good.” Part of her wants to stay and finish waking her up, but seduction without an ulterior motive feels like crashing an unfamiliar dance with two left feet. She doesn’t even want to call it that, she just—

Wants to kiss her again, but not if she doesn’t. This was easier when she had a character to play. “And keep the clothes as long as you need them.” She ducks out and starts packing things.

 

* * *

 

Nothing else attacks them that morning, happily. It's a straight shot west from the river, across a network of old trails and remnants of roads, to where the Warden’s location is marked on Cassandra's map.

Also happily, the map is right. The place, when they reach it, reveals itself as a crumbling tower on a hill, its wide turret reaching just above the treetops. If it was once part of a bigger structure, the rest has been reclaimed by the swamp. Rickety wooden steps zigzag up the slope to the tower door and down the opposite side. A faded blue Warden banner hangs out one of the windows.

Cassandra calls out, "Hello? Warden Marcelle!"

No answer. A breeze cuts through the trees and the banner sways a little.

“This has to be her post,” Cassandra says. “Why would she be out?”

Leliana slides down from Snowdrop’s back and looks for a place to tie him. “She could be hard of hearing. We could knock.”

Leaving the horses cropping reeds and undergrowth at the bottom of the hill near water, they climb the steps to the banded wooden door at the tower’s base. Silence still reigns.

“Or we could just take a little look inside,” Leliana says.

“Or that.”

The lock looks ancient and almost unworthy of the name. She could probably pick it with a twig.

“There is some magic active in there,” says Cassandra, leaning back to look up at the windows.

“A trap?”

“I don’t think so, but take care.”

In seconds the lock creaks and clicks, and she edges the door open a crack. Nothing triggers. She opens it wider, and leans in. A dim stone stair, spiraling up to the next floor. No tripwires or pressure plates. She wouldn’t expect them here, but that’s the best reason to look.

“Stop me if I am about to set off a lightning bolt or wake a demon,” she says, reaching back to touch Cassandra’s arm, and they creep up and around the stair carefully.

There’s nothing on the steps except a healthy layer of grime around the edges and spiderwebs to rival the ones back in her offices, which she ducks.

From the first landing, another door opens on a semicircular chamber that must have served as sitting room, kitchen, and bedroom. The window shutters are open, admitting a welcome breeze from above the swamp trees, and the banner is flapping outside it.

Cassandra steps in front of her through the door and looks both ways. “I sense nothing here. It must be above us.”

The fireplace is dark and swept out. The fruit in a bowl on the table is brown and wrinkling but not yet rotten. “Well, she hasn’t been gone too long.”

The floor above looks like Marcelle’s workroom, filled with the shelves of musty books, half-melted candles, taxidermy, glassware, and other paraphernalia that mages seem to accumulate.

Leliana tiptoes through the clutter and shelves and tables, following the curve of the room around the tower, shadow alternating with light from the wide-spaced arrow-slit windows. Cassandra is a step behind her with her hand on her sword hilt.

Halfway around, between two shelves, something gleams in the dark. Curious, she approaches it.

It’s large and oval and partly draped in cloth; a mirror? There’s a buzzing feeling around it, tempting her to investigate. On impulse she reaches out and lifts the cloth just as Cassandra says, “Wait—”

Both their faces are reflected in the glass for a second. Then splintering cracks jump across it, bringing blinding pain and noise inside her head.

Her mind suddenly feels stretched, an explosion of sensations, as if she’s being pulled out of her body in different directions. She has too many limbs, too many eyes, too many mouths. She thinks she’s fallen, or maybe not, or on her knees, or all three. The floor is hard against her face, or blasting her with heat, or fingers digging into her temples.

A strange woman’s voice surfaces shrilly in the swirl of impressions. “What in the blighted hell—?” Then, “Oh, I see you. Don’t try to explain. Don’t leave till I get back.” A vivid image of magma-lit caverns overgrown with malignancies and a glowing staff before her, a surge of anger, and it pops like a bubble in her mind.

The heat is gone and she can breathe. Familiar air. Her breath has an echo. The number of limbs is still too many, and she can’t locate her body in space, dizzyingly.

She hears words in her mind, in Cassandra’s voice, and feels hands still over her face, and connects them, realizes they’re not hers. This lets her pull together the set of thoughts that seem most likely to belong to her, enough to open her eyes—

And immediately close them again with a wave of nausea. Cassandra groans.

 _Sorry, sorry, sorry, blast it_ , Leliana thinks, curling up on the floor where she assumes she’s lying, wanting to laugh at the absurdity of this scene that is completely her fault from the start. And she had wanted to know her feelings. Andraste is answering her prayers right and left. As it were.

 _Just. Keep. Your. Eyes. Shut_ , Cassandra thinks. _Breathe_. Then a jumble of images, rows of bowed Seeker heads and candles and heavy silence—meditation lessons? Leliana concentrates on her own breath, following her.

After some time breathing in the red dark they are sharing behind their eyelids, Cassandra says aloud, "My head is splitting."

"I know. Maker." The way her own voice resounds in her head makes it worse.

"And I know you know. Ugh. Forget it." Cassandra crawls a little way toward her, and the room lurches. "Maybe we can help each other up."

 _To go where?_ she thinks.

"Out of here."

 _Why for the blessed Lady's sake are you talking out loud?_ She curls tighter into her ball.

"Because I don't accept this," Cassandra says. "Whatever this mage has done. I don't know why it won't dispel." She crawls closer. "But I won't look inside your head if you won't look in mine."

Leliana tries speaking again. "I can't exactly help it." The echo comes back, and the stability of the stone tiles becomes very attractive.

"You can if I can." Irritation overlying a concern that would be endearing if she weren’t about to be sick. "Never mind that now. Let's just try to get on our feet."

Cassandra opens her eyes, breaking the warm darkness. Leliana sees herself from behind, hugging the stone, cobwebs in her hair at the back, she notes.

She feels herself grab herself under the arms and pry herself off the floor. It’s a bizarre mirror-feeling, both sides of a touch simultaneously, and the sheer oddity of it distracts her from the headache.

 _This is the strangest thing I’ve ever felt_ , she thinks, pulling her knees under her, keeping her own eyes shut. When she braces herself on Cassandra’s shoulder, she feels that too. She thinks she even smells herself and doesn’t dislike it.

“Tell me about it. You will have to stand up with me, at the same time,” Cassandra says, still doggedly using her voice.

Kneeling here clinging to each other is helping in some ways, certainly. She wonders if that thought was loud enough to be heard. “All right,” she says. “Count of three?”

Her mind must be adjusting a little, because right away she can tell the nod isn’t hers.

On three, they both make an ungainly effort to stand, lurching and almost climbing each other, until they are somehow balanced on two feet each, still hanging on. A step at a time, they make it through the workshop to the doorway without falling and then undertake the tower stairs, like two blind-drunk women without combined decades of physical training.

As they are negotiating the steps and she’s squeezed against the spiderwebbed stone with her eyes closed, Leliana tries to feel out the mental space they are sharing, and becomes aware of something like a veil across Cassandra’s thoughts, hiding most of them. She wonders if she has one too.

“No,” Cassandra says. And then, in exasperation, “I said I would not look.”

 _Fine_ , she thinks, _I won’t look at yours_. Her foot hits the next step and she grabs dizzily at Cassandra’s arm to bring her around.

“It is a thing Seekers learn. I can show you, if we do not both”—she stumbles down—”break our necks here.”

When they reach the second floor, they collapse in relief across the Warden’s moth-eaten rug in the downstairs room. Leliana finally gives in to her desire to laugh, and so they both do.

“At least we found Marcelle. In the Deep Roads. Who knows how long it will take her to return, or whether she can fix this.”

“Don’t even suggest it.” Cassandra puts her hand over her eyes.

Leliana opens hers a crack, squinting. The disorientation is still there, but she can see the room, and separately, the back of Cassandra’s hand.

“There is an entrance to the Deep Roads nearby,” Cassandra continues. “She must be down there. But not too far down, from what we saw.” She rubs knuckles into her forehead, closing her eyes.

Leliana remembers seeing an elfroot tonic bottle in the saddlebags. And they will need food; it could take the mage days to return. “This is my fault. Don’t argue. I’ll go after it.”

“Be my guest.”

“Just don’t move around, or open your eyes, or think anything shocking.”

Cassandra almost laughs again and then winces. “I will contemplate the Maker’s unfathomable design.”

The headache makes it hard for Leliana to tell how long it takes her to get down all of the far too many steps to where they left the horses, unbuckle the correct saddlebag, and crawl back up every single one of them while wanting to retch. As she drags herself back into the room, Cassandra hasn’t moved, but her worry and then relief are apparent.

She empties the saddlebag on the floor and rummages through the contents for the little bottle. “There. For your head.”

Cassandra sits up. “You should do the same.” She swallows half of it and hands Leliana the rest. Leliana grimaces, tasting it with her, then quickly finishes it and lets herself back down on the rug.

She lies there trying not to talk, move, look at anything, or think too hard about anything, or wonder how not to think about things.

“Imagine you are lighting a candle to Andraste,” Cassandra says from next to her. “Put all your thoughts into the flame. That is how they trained us.”

She sees a tall votive candle in her … their? … mind’s eye, the kind every chantry goes through in cartloads, burning steadily in darkness.

“Eventually it should feel like you’re … wrapped in a shield of light. If that makes any sense.”

She likes the metaphor, remembers similar exercises from her service in Lothering, but struggles with it. Something is incomplete. Then her imagination begins to fill in the rest: the sweet beeswax smell, the heat on her face, and the sound of the Chant as it is perpetually sung in the Cathedral. She breathes and lets the song enfold her.

“I suppose that is another way to do it,” Cassandra remarks after some indefinable time has passed, still with her own eyes closed. “All I hear now is singing.”

The headache and nausea are fading, maybe because the elfroot mixture is taking hold. In their place, Leliana begins to feel fuzzy, warm, and sleepy. She also finds that she’s hungry, or one of them is. Understandable, as they haven’t eaten since the morning.

The song continues in her head as she pushes herself up. It seems to absorb the impact of the conflicting sensations and resonances, like a blanket. Or maybe that’s the medicine. Or both together.

The first bundle from the saddlebag is just more unappetizing, damp-then-dried-out travel bread. The second, though, folded in several tidy layers of paper wrapped in oilskin, is a small squashy treasure smelling of butter and sugar.

“Red-and-white cakes?” Leliana says aloud. They are a favorite of hers, a Val Royeaux specialty that the Cathedral kitchens do quite well. “Where were you hiding these?”

“I was not hiding them. Most Holy mentioned something about you liking them.”

Leliana bites into one. The fruit and cream are still delicious, although the baker would have conniptions over the state of the decoration now.

Cassandra says sleepily, “I see that she was right. If _see_ is the right word.”

She pushes the rest across the floor toward her. “You’re hungry too, don’t deny it.”

She doesn’t, but rolls onto her side and takes one.

With their eyes open at the same time, the tower room takes on a kaleidoscopic quality that’s now more fascinating than sickening. Leliana sings in her head and eats her cake and watches Cassandra eat hers and look back at her and around.

“I think this is stranger than anything that happened to me during the Blight,” she says, fuzzily, and then laughs. “Do you know I can tell you don’t like these as much as I do?”

“But I can also tell why you like them,” Cassandra says, taking another bite. “It is strange, but convincing.”

She looks up at the ceiling and begins to hum along with the song in both their heads.

“I can stop,” Leliana says. “If that bothers you more than my undisciplined thoughts.”

Cassandra swallows her last bite of cake, covers her mouth, and yawns. “I was not complaining either time.” Then she adds, “It is pretty. Go on if it helps you.”

“Then maybe I’ll sing you to sleep,” Leliana says, daring inside her warm metaphorical blanket. She stretches out and props herself on her elbow.

Cassandra yawns again and just says, “Mmm,” and closes her eyes.

Quickly thereafter she does slip into sleep—the tonic must have been very concentrated—and although Leliana tries to stay awake and be the watcher, she finds herself slipping after.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t fully realize she’s dreaming until she looks over and sees a little balcony on the far side of the tower, and the walls of a city in the distance. The Warden’s shabby furnishings change to richer, heavier ones as she gets up and crosses the room, flickering on the edge of her vision in that way peculiar to the Fade.

The room on this side feels stiffer, and smaller. A child’s things are sequestered on a shelf by the bed: a doll, a wooden sword, a few dog-eared books.

Cassandra is standing on the balcony, she realizes, feeling a dull frustration coming from her. The link persists in dreams, then, if not strongly enough to convey thoughts.

“Leliana? Is that you?” She sounds sharp and alert again. Then, “Never mind. I can tell it is.”

“You fell asleep, and then I couldn’t stay awake.” Her voice echoes a little in whatever the Fade has instead of air, but it’s nowhere near as bad as before.

“The magic must have pulled you after me.” Cassandra snorts and leans on the window frame. “If this were not strange enough. But if you are stuck here too, I’m sorry this dream is not more exciting.”

“I just crossed a room without being sick,” Leliana says, stepping out onto the balcony. “Even if I’m imagining it, that’s exciting.”

“True. At least this is a way to wait it out, in our sleep.”

“What is this place, in the real world?”

Stones float overhead, and the sky is green shading into white. The city below is quiet but subtly shifting, out of focus. Grand statues and monuments rear up among the buildings.

“My brother and I lived with my uncle after our parents died. I never liked his house.”

Nevarra City, then; yes, Leliana has heard it described so, as a city of statues.

“When my brother went out hunting, they would not let me go, so I waited here and watched for him to come back.”

She looks out at the floating skyline again, and Leliana can feel that she doesn’t want to talk more about this.

She changes the subject. “I wonder what Warden Marcelle will think if she comes back to find us both unconscious on her sitting room rug.”

“I don’t care what she thinks,” says Cassandra, crossing her hands on the railing. “She will fix this.”

“Well, until then, I could sing,” Leliana jokes.

“I like your singing. And your company,” she adds, taking a breath, “in case I have not been clear. I have been told it doesn’t show.”

Leliana is supposed to be trained out of this variety of self-consciousness. “And I like yours,” she says quickly. “Luckily for all concerned.” She follows the edge of the balcony around to peer down the side of the building. “But there must be something more than this here. Did you ever try to climb down?”

The stones are smooth, but project in a regular pattern leading down, offering decent handholds. Some distance below, the wall disappears into undefined haze.

Cassandra leans over and shakes her head. “The real wall was not like this.”

Leliana tests a hand on the stone, then climbs onto the railing and pulls herself over onto the wall, gripping the next stone and wedging her toes in the cracks below. Her weight seems trivial in the atmosphere of the Fade. “Look, though, an actual child could do this.” She climbs down a little way. Vines appear on the stone around her, shift from bare to green and back. “Come on. I am curious now. I think your dream wants to be less boring.”

Still leaning over the railing, Cassandra looks down and smiles again like she can’t help it. “When you say it like that.”

Her head disappears, there is an echoey scuffling, and after a few moments she is clambering down the wall above Leliana in her stocking feet, having shed boots and unnecessary bits of plate, frustration overtaken by her own curiosity.

Once they are out of sight of the balcony, fog obscures the view all around, as if the dream world is only them and a twenty-foot bubble. They descend past ivy and moss and climbing flowers that are sometimes white and sometimes a greenish blue against the dark stone blocks.

“My uncle’s house was not this high,” Cassandra says. “In the Fade this wall could be endless.”

“It is your dream,” Leliana says, craning her neck up. “Can you change it?”

As she asks the question, the fog swirls and clears, the wall goes with it, and they drop into something entirely different: a nighttime street, alive with voices, dark silhouettes, and the glow of lanterns everywhere.

A pile of straw breaks their fall without impact. Figures whose faces she can’t quite make out are standing all around, blocking her view. Shapes in bright colors are moving back and forth in the distance.

Cassandra sits up in the straw, real and distinct among these shadows. “The festival of ancestors?” She grins, surprised, bordering on marveling.

“You did this? It worked!”

“My brother agreed we would sneak out one year. It was wonderful. I always wanted to see it again.”

She holds out her hand to Leliana and pulls her to her feet, that oddly pleasurable mirroring sensation seizing her as their fingers touch. “Now, you come on. Speaking of excitement. I will show you.”

The city air of Cassandra’s memory is crisp and smoky, exhilarating, as they hurry through obsidian streets with figures ducking out of their way.

Other figures in costume are performing, every way they turn, under those towering monuments and bright lanterns: dancers, lovers, duelists, miniature armies reenacting battles and exploits of the Nevarran noble families, or as much of them as Cassandra recalls. Her enthusiasm increases as they go, and would be hard to resist even if Leliana could only feel it through her hand.

She follows where Cassandra drags her, from spectacle to spectacle, watching her as much as her dream-surroundings. This animated side of her, astir with emotion through the mind-link, is another one Leliana hasn’t seen before. She might call herself enchanted if it weren’t an atrocious pun in their present circumstances.

They’re passing a troupe performing with a massive dragon-head mask—surely bigger than it was in reality, and the flames could never have been real—when it lunges into the street, and they’re thrown together against the floating stone robes of some ancestral Pentaghast, shoved back by shadow-figures fleeing the dragon’s charge.

Leliana catches her, holds on and feels herself holding, a sudden solid reality in the midst of the dream, the second time they’ve been like this today.

Cassandra breathes in, then her ribs shake. “I saved you from an imaginary demon”—she laughs louder—“but I think you are winning with a tower and an imaginary dragon.” She seems to realize the implications as she says it, and the color in her face deepens, but she doesn’t let go Leliana’s hand or shake her arm off, and her feelings say she likes this too.

Then the dragon charges again, tossing its head, the crowd surging back with a dull roar of sound like an echo of squeals and applause. “I don’t think I’ve saved you yet,” Leliana says, and drags her through the press of dream people into a convenient alley.

As they run hand in hand she wonders how much of the tingling through her body is hers, fingers to shoulder to chest and down her back. The anticipation surely is, though she doesn’t know what she’ll do with it.

This new path stretches out and up, and then the obsidian walls disintegrate at the top and begin to sprout leaves, until it becomes undeniable that the Fade has shifted again and they’re in a hedge maze under a dark greenish sky.

Two turns, and the hedge opens on a long lantern-lit garden in the style that was fashionable half a decade ago. Some of the topiaries are floating, and others are in shapes Leliana has never seen in a real Orlesian garden, but she recognizes it and the chateau in the distance.

“I think this has become my dream,” she says, looking both ways and back at Cassandra. “Do you mind a little more running?”

Cassandra shakes her head, somewhat unnecessarily, and keeps holding her hand, which is quite necessary.

“I … visited here once as a bard,” Leliana says. “It was, shall we say, a memorable night.”

A job she did on her own, one of the rare times when Marjolaine let her take her own reins. She maneuvered her way into a private invitation to sing, stole the countess’s letters from her writing desk and some very pretty jewels from off her pretty neck, and then led her guard a merry chase on the way out.

She wonders whatever happened to that necklace; it really was lovely.

“I won’t ask why you are so amused,” Cassandra says, walking after her into the strange dream-garden.

Leliana laughs. Then a group of figures in trailing skirts, puffed sleeves, and capes pass in front of the lights ahead, and laughter echoes back, higher-pitched.

“Oh,” she says, “that means it’s time to run.”

They run again, down a side path overhung with flowers, and a servants’ door she doesn’t remember is in front of them.

“This way, I think.”

Inside is a drab windowless passage, then a short stair, and three branching passages to choose from. The left one ends in another door. When Leliana cracks it open, on the other side is the countess’s entry hall, busy with a blur of arriving guests whose names and affiliations she’d memorized at the time. She closes it again.

“We should find masks, to do this right.” She thinks a moment. “Or, if this dream is mine …”

She doesn’t fully expect it to work, but the Fade cooperates with her concentration, and the stained riding clothes of today shift into what she wore for the job years ago: a pale brocade doublet, impeccable linen, and a matching half-mask in the bard’s style.

“What?” Cassandra looks down at herself. Leliana’s unconscious has assigned her the same.

She laughs. “I suppose you’re borrowing my clothes again.”

“It could be worse.” She tugs at the sleeves. “But I will not sing.”

“Just follow me and don’t take requests,” Leliana says.

She opens the door again and slips through.

The portraits on the walls change every time she looks at them. The dream-guests, milling around in their masks and conversing indistinctly, don’t seem to notice her, but they do get in the way, and the number of them keeps increasing as she crosses the entry hall and makes her way into the chateau proper. She keeps thinking she's lost Cassandra momentarily and then finding her frowning while ducking around someone in her path.

Near the ballroom entrance, she’s glancing back again when an intelligible voice descends on her, jarringly. Before she can protest, the countess has already claimed her arm—and this dance, as marked on the dance card she realizes she’s now holding.

She remembers the countess’s face as well as her accent, southern Orlesian and charming. She was lovely and practiced in the Game and it was a pleasure to outwit her, but if Leliana has to play it out again she intends to cut it short.

The musicians are close to the entrance. Saying that she has something different in mind, she breaks away toward them and asks for a faster piece of music. The countess beams at this special treatment. When their masks turn to her for approval, she tells them to do whatever Leliana asks.

Taking her place on the floor, Leliana wonders if she would know if Cassandra woke before her. She can sense frustration from her still, but no serious discomfort.

Once the music starts, the countess makes the same appropriately veiled advances, and Leliana parries them with half her attention while looking past her shoulder. When she finds Cassandra again, standing beside a food table, with a forbearing expression, she grins at her and starts a complicated turn to show off.

The second time she passes, Cassandra has found a corner with a clear view and no guests within ten feet, and is more at ease. She smiles. Leliana decides to put more effort into it.

The appreciative awareness she felt outside returns as she circles the room faster and they keep catching each other's eyes, like tiny sparks in their shared cloud of feeling.

Or like the tiny flames glimmering in the countess’s ruby necklace when Leliana dances her under the tall branches of candles that light the room, floating, for that creepy Fade touch. Is the countess a pure figment of her imagination, or some spirit taking her shape for fun? For that matter, all the guests could be spirits, she thinks. This situation might be prime entertainment for them.

As her hand slides up the woman's arm and down her back, brushing the clasp at her neck, she sees her exit strategy and a way to give them a little more of a show.

When the music crescendos, Leliana spins the countess into dizziness and then dips her low over her arm, at the same time unclasping the necklace and slipping it off the high collar of her gown with one hand: a good trick, if she does say so herself, better than her original method.

The music ends. She palms it and bows. The countess is giggling and breathless and asks for another.

Leliana kisses her fingers to her, says, “My card is full, I’m afraid,” and hurries to Cassandra’s corner, hoping she hasn’t angered a roomful of potential demons.

She grabs Cassandra’s hand again and pulls her through a curtained archway out of sight.

“The guards will be after us in less than a minute, if I know my own mind.”

“Why?”

Leliana opens her fingers. The rubies gleam in the candlelight. “The first time, I admit, I stole these for myself, but I suspect they would also suit you.” She holds them up to Cassandra’s face.

“You stole them?” Cassandra is discomfited, but the degree to which she is also pleased is satisfying. She pulls off the bard’s mask. “You think so?”

“Try it.” Leliana tosses the necklace.

As she reflexively catches it, there’s the sound of armored boots on marble close by.

“Maybe not right now.” Leliana is already starting down the passage, away from the sound. “This way? It looks familiar.”

“I don't know why you didn't imagine weapons into this getup.”

They are running now, soft-footed but fast, outpacing the guards. “The job was about finesse,” Leliana says over her shoulder. “I was not exactly armed to the teeth. You might have a boot knife.”

Cassandra snorts and follows her through a set of double doors into a hall hung with portraits, and then another, and another. The eyes seem to move. This part of the dream-chateau is eerily quiet, except for the jingles and thuds and shouts of the guards far behind.

Through another curtain, up a set of stairs, and then Leliana turns a corner and stops short before she collides with a cluster of masked figures. Somehow they have looped back to the entry hall—or the dream is tricking her. She wheels and runs in the opposite direction, trying to blank her mind.

The sound of the guards running and cursing fades out, and she can only hear Cassandra’s feet and hers. The paintings shift faster and the light goes out.

When it comes back, it’s different, an evening sky instead of glittering chandeliers, and a glowing fountain playing in colors in an empty courtyard.

“I think we lost them,” Cassandra says behind her, catching her arm.

She’s right: they’ve lost everyone, and run from Orlais back to Tevinter, and this is a superior dream already, even if she didn’t plan it.

“Fancy meeting you here again,” Leliana says, pulling her own mask off. It disappears before touching the ground. “Is this my dream or yours?"

"I don't know."

She turns, back to the wall, with a sneaking charged delight that she’s mostly sure is her own. "So, you did hold that thought for me."

A moment of startlement, and she feels her tone go to her head, a new quick-flaring excitement that isn't hers.

"You could say that," Cassandra admits.

The excitement is hers now, and pointless to try hiding.

“Although, since we are still in the Fade,” Cassandra continues, “there is always the risk of a demon at work.”

She’s not actually apprehensive, about that at least. Leliana laughs. “I won’t say I can grant all your deepest wishes, but since we are here, I’m pleased to finish what I started."

"I did not say it was my deepest wish." Cassandra frowns.

Leliana takes both her hands before she can cross her arms. "See? I would make an awful desire demon."

She gives in and chuckles. She’s still holding the necklace, a handful of smooth hard cabochons. Leliana pries it out of her fingers and threads the ribbon around her neck to fasten it. “And these rubies aren’t even real, so they don’t count, but I was right.”

“I wondered if you would. Finish it,” Cassandra adds then, as Leliana clasps it at the back of her neck, the opposite of her ploy with the countess.

She waits, not dropping her hands, savoring the whirl of nervousness and elation she feels.

“Now you are waiting for me? I—” Cassandra glances down and, finally, pulls her closer. “Yes.”

It’s still a dream, and thus strange, maybe just a memory of a kiss, or their combined memories of one: all emotion, responding to each other's response, escalating, ungrounded. Dizzy, enchanted, surprised, swept off their feet, like after she broke the mirror, except good.

She’s struck by how Cassandra throws herself into it headlong like she's running into battle, holding nothing back to judge or analyze. And she’s all for holding on, now she’s caught her again.

But naturally, because this is a dream, it begins to fragment and shiver before she’s ready.

 

* * *

 

They awaken in the tower room, pressed against each other, someone’s face in someone’s hair. The concrete reality is, for a second, better, with another giddy reverberation of who’s feeling what.

That is, until the bright late-morning light and the hard floor and the headache hit them, twice over.

And that’s before they register the angry mage standing over them.

Cassandra curses in her mind and Leliana realizes her mental shield is down. _Maker take it_ , now?

Leliana squeezes her eyes shut. _It’s not even funny_.

 _But it is, a little_ , with wry amusement. _Still. The mission._

She rolls to a sitting position, trying for a cool exterior befitting the Divine’s Hand. Cassandra pushes herself up with one arm and tugs her mail straight. _I should speak to her, but I am feeling very undiplomatic._

 _Tell me about that_ , Leliana thinks. _I’ll do it. Cover your eyes—_

Marcelle interrupts, scowling down at them. Her stare is very green. “I know who you are. I saw it in your minds right away. I don’t know what you’re doing breaking into my post or sleeping on my rug.”

Leliana stares back and swallows down the nausea. “We’re here to—”

Marcelle doesn’t stop. “But I’ll fix you, out of the deeply hidden goodness of my heart, even though you deserve it for doing what the Chantry does best. Meddling with things you don’t understand.”

She keeps quiet and thanks the Prophet for small mercies.

In one hand, the mage brandishes a shard of mirror glass. “Before I do … you cost me a year’s work and some rare supplies. I’ll have your promise to make that good.” She pauses, glancing up. “And, besides that, one more thing. As many answers about the experience as I want, for my notes. I never get live test subjects.”

“Absolutely,” Leliana says. “The Chantry will repay all your losses, and ask us whatever you like. I’ll swear to that.”

“I should make you sign something,” Marcelle mutters. “Spies and clerics double-talk. Oh, well.”

A glow of power rises around her staff, then flashes as she squeezes the mirror shard in her fist, crushing it to powder.

After a second of stunning, blinding pain, the world shrinks down to the usual arrangement of limbs and eyes and Leliana’s own emotions. It feels momentarily incomplete, but thank the Maker, her body is hers again.

“My thanks, Warden,” Cassandra says, getting to her feet, her face softening in relief and chagrin. “I can only apologize for this ... incident.”

“And so do I, truly. But, as I was saying”—Leliana stands up—”we are here to deliver an invitation from Her Holiness Divine Justinia V. She’s heard of your work and wishes to consult with you on a matter of great importance.”

“Hmm,” Marcelle says. “What?”

“It is secret, but if you’re willing, we’ll escort you to Val Royeaux to meet with her. She has personally written to your commander already.”

"I hate riding," Marcelle says. "And I hate leaving my work, and I hate company. No offense. Well, that’s not true." She takes a flask from behind a book on the shelf and pours a drink, with no motion to share. "This sounds like a trap more than anything, but I am curious about why the Divine would be personally interested in little old me. I thought the Circle forgot me years ago. I should know you all have long memories."

"Most Holy sent us because the Circle has no claim on you. She humbly requests a little of your time." Cassandra is trying to sound humble and landing on impatient.

"We'll have you back and you'll never know you were gone," Leliana says, "if Her Holiness can't convince you of the charms of the capital." She thinks quickly about what tempts mages. "I understand the University of Orlais has a newly unearthed collection of pre-Andrastian scholarship on the Fade."

“Hmm,” Marcelle snorts again, but her eyes shift.

“And you would, of course, stay in the palace wing of the Cathedral, in the best rooms, quite close to the libraries.”

"No templars will trouble you." Cassandra touches her Seeker insignia. "You have my word."

"That's something." She studies Cassandra's face and squints as she finishes her drink. "I must be more of an idiot than you two, but I also hate this swamp, and I'm not getting any younger. If the Sixth Blight starts from this shithole while I’m gone, the world can blame you, yes? Clear out and let me close up and send to the Warden-Commander."

Outside the tower, sitting on the steps, after Marcelle has slammed the door on them, Leliana laughs. "Another job well done? Assuming she’s wrong about the Blight."

"It’s not done yet."

"You’re right, it isn’t." She gives this a little weight of innuendo and nudges Cassandra with her shoulder.

The corner of her mouth turns up, unrestrained. “I was not wrong that things would be more interesting with you.”

The third time they kiss is blessedly normal, and surprising because of it, and also interrupted by Marcelle, because Andraste and the Maker will have their fun.

So are the fourth through ninth, on the way back, although Leliana is determined to persevere.

"She is doing it on purpose," Cassandra says behind a tree the fifth time, after the mage calls them to answer another question for her notes.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Leliana goes to handle it, leaving her to finish scouting the perimeter of their camp for the night.

They have to trade off watching again. Marcelle doesn’t sleep much, wakes every hour to relieve herself, and snores when she does sleep.

By the time they ride through the gates of Val Royeaux the next evening, Leliana is done placating and cajoling and giving plausible half-answers, and is more than ready to deposit the woman in Her Perfection’s gentler hands.

The sun is down and the Cathedral is quiet when they deliver Marcelle to the Divine, who is wide awake and doesn’t turn a hair, but offers her tea. When Marcelle demands brandy instead, Justinia chuckles and produces a bottle of old Antivan.

Covering her relief, Leliana says, “If all is well, Most Holy, we’ll excuse ourselves to prepare our report on the mission.”

“Yes, of course, child. Thank you for assisting.”

Once they’re out of the Divine’s chambers and past the guards, she glances over at Cassandra. “We do need to decide what to say.”

“I suppose not all the details are relevant.” There’s a shadow of a grin playing around her face now.

“No. Are your rooms closer than mine? I think they are, and with fewer spiders.”

And that is when, to follow through on her joking-but-serious suggestion from weeks ago, she applies herself to the mission of kissing in every empty corridor between here and there, uninterrupted, until Cassandra kicks her door shut behind them. And eventually a report is written, as well.


End file.
